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By Root 406 0

always having to be more for everyone. Nothing was ever good enough. Lisa had known what he was all about when she married him. He’d never made any bones about who he was. She was the one who’d changed. What did she expect, with all her sweet piety and constant optimism? It was like living with a goddamn nun on Prozac. He was sick of always being told to look on the bright side and love his fellow man. He was sick of trying to understand people’s fears and forgive them their shortcomings. How could she call him selfish when he’d spent his whole life doing for others, making up for his family’s shame, his brother’s misery? And here he was, still at it, still being sucked into the miasma of weakness and ineptitude that was Gordon’s life. That’s the part she didn’t get. And never had.

Brakes squealing, he pulled up in front of the house. He hit the front door with his wet fist, banging, banging, banging harder, harder. “Open the door! Open the door! Open the goddamn door, you—”

“You’re all wet,” Gordon said in all his volitionless inertia, not letting him in, continuing to hold the door ajar, standing there in his tight gray pajamas, the sleeves skimpy, the cloth dull as his eyes.

He pushed his way inside, wanting to tell his brother how he’d gone through this once and he wasn’t going to go through it again, having his life turned upside down and everything he cared about threatened and compromised. He had known this wouldn’t work. What had he been thinking? He should have just sold this place a long time ago and forced his brother to go his own way, instead of always thinking he had to be the one to pick up all the pieces and put everything back together, because that’s the way it had always been, because that’s all he knew how to do, it seemed, anymore.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Gordon asked.

He sank onto the couch, for a moment bewildered that he had not said it and could not, because the wound that was his heart continued pumping its spasm of bloodred heat in his chest while his eyes tried to adjust to the dimness of this shabby room.

“Can I get you something to drink? A glass of water? A beer? I have one. I keep it there.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “For you. It’s cold. It’s in the refrigerator. I can go get it.”

Dennis laughed. He couldn’t help it. “What do you do here? What do you do when you come home?”

“I read. I watch television. Sometimes. If there’s something good on.”

“Tell me something. Am I the only one who ever comes here?”

“No,” Gordon said, blinking.

“Is that where you sit?” He pointed to the chair in the corner. “It is, isn’t it. That way you can see the street and the TV all at the same time.” He chuckled. “Gordon’s window on the world, huh?”

“Don’t be mad at me, Dennis. I didn’t do anything.”

“But I did, right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You know all those letters you got? All the family news, the stupid jokes, the newspaper clippings? Well, did you ever wonder what was really going on here? Or did you think it was all the same?”

“I knew it was hard. How hurt you all were.” Gordon stared down at the floor, head bobbing faintly up and down in that maddeningly goofy way that made him look so stupid and inept. “I know what it did to everyone.”

“I don’t mean that! You’re still so caught up in self-pity you think everything’s about you, don’t you? Poor Gordon, nothing ever goes right for him, does it? Well, guess what, poor Gordon, while you were licking your wounds, I was the one alone here. Because of you I didn’t have a father or mother anymore. From that point on it was all up to me. Me! They expected me to make everything right.”

“I’m sorry, Dennis.”

“You’re sorry? Well, what the hell good is that?” he exploded, fists so tightly clenched that the nails gouged his palms.

“What do you want? What do you want me to say?” came the slow, dead voice.

“Nothing.” Dennis had forgotten just how obtusely cold his brother could be.

“The truth is, I didn’t really think of what it did to you so much as what it did to Mom and Dad. You always seemed so lucky, I guess, so on top of everything all